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Jessica Still is the newly appointed President of the Oxford Graduate Christian Forum (GCF). She is studying a BPhil in Philosophy. We get to know her better in the following interview.

Where did you grow up and what was life like?

I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and life was very ordinary! I loved school, and all of the extra things that came with it like drama classes and music lessons. My two older brothers often kept to themselves, and subsequently went to boarding school, so I spent ages by myself as a child in the house doing arts and crafts and writing rhyming poetry, haha. I had a very privileged experience of life in South Africa, in the sense that I always had everything I needed, although job-search difficulties meant that my father had to live apart from my mother and me for 4 years, when I was in high school, which was very difficult. It was only when I went to the University of Cape Town (UCT) for my undergraduate degree, and rubbed shoulders with young people from vastly different backgrounds than myself, that it began to dawn on me in a more visceral way how unequal South Africa is, and how protected and easy my life had been! My undergraduate years overlapped perfectly with the #RhodesMustFall movement which started at UCT, which was a rollercoaster of learning and growth for many of us. There was increased racial tension between students at my university and my campus had a very politicised feel, underpinned by the tenets of identity politics and a strong shaming or ‘call-out’ culture. I learned so much; and had to unlearn a lot too. I started to appreciate the profound economic and relational effects that Apartheid still has on South Africans, and to engage with how I benefit from its legacy, and how my privilege comes with responsibilities. My undergraduate experience was overall extremely positive for me, and I feel like I haven’t finished learning from it. There are fine-grain issues regarding my privilege (or what one might call ‘white-guilt’) which I still chew over, like accepting the fact that I am studying philosophy and therefore might not work to decrease South Africa’s poverty and inequality, or that I tend to qualify my expressions of hurt by acknowledging that they are not as bad as other people’s (notice how I said earlier that my life was easy). Race, privilege and pain are complicated, which makes South Africa a complicated place, but I am immensely grateful for the lessons and perspectives which growing up there has given me.

What is your Christian story?

When I was small my mother used to tuck me into bed, saying “I love you,” each night. My father would do the same, but his parting words would be “Jesus loves you.” I took it that they were each telling me what they thought was the most comforting and important thing for me to hear. My family are not believers, except for my father, and his faith (as well as his jocularity) has influenced me in innumerable ways. But my faith-development owes to a cloud of witnesses: a wonderful school chaplain who used to preach about the miracle of being able to move one’s pinky finger (and how much he loved to kiss his wife), a soberly-kind grade 0 teacher who remembered my name and greeted me warmly throughout my school career, a quirky art teacher who showed me that Christians are allowed to be quite wacky, a community of older students who shared a good-natured warmth and frankness which I longed one day to possess, and many more along the way. I think I became a Christian when I was 12, but it is hard to say. I have been blessed throughout my life with Christian role models via my school, my family and the ministry of Scripture Union Independent Schools (SUIS) which ran camps in the school holidays. Some of these role models have become friends, and I’m grateful to God for what he continues to show me through each of them.

What do you currently understand to be God’s call on your life?

I am a bit at a loss as to God’s call on my life, but I think that it might involve ministry of some kind. I am studying a two-year masters, the BPhil in Philosophy, here at Oxford, but I do not think that my life is meant to be primarily academic. I can see myself working in an academic environment, but perhaps in more of a ministerial or evangelical role. I also really enjoy art and drama, and I feel as though this is too-large a part of myself to play no part in what I do. I would also love to have a family. In sum, I can see myself working in an evangelical capacity, and hopefully in quite creative ways, and perhaps in academic sorts of spaces. For now though, I think that God’s call on my life is to focus on my work at hand, i.e. to learn about philosophy and be faithful with the responsibilities He has given me, including learning as much as I can from others and growing in my new role as president of the GCF!

What challenges and opportunities do you see for students next term?

The big challenge, of course, is to maintain a sense of community and to attract new members even though we will have to operate entirely online! This will require a lot of imagination and creativity, I think, and hopefully we can make it work. The uniqueness of this strange new quarantined world we live in presents unique difficulties for students, like loneliness and isolation. So perhaps the best way to go about GCF next term will be to accept and make the most of these unusual circumstances, rather than trying to mimic previous GCF terms exactly. For example, we can find ways that the GCF community can serve students in their isolation. Moreover, I think that so many people, including students, are being led to ask big questions of life, given the uncertainty and apparent frailty of the world at present. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity to us; to be able to share the hope we have in Christ in a respectful, gentle and humble way with students who may be newly interested in who He is, and in where He is to be found right now. It will be a specific challenge to do this in a relational, dialogue-centred way given that we will have to operate online.

What prayer points for GCF?

I would really appreciate prayer for my leadership! I am new to this, and new to Oxford, and I really want to do well with this new responsibility, which is quite daunting. The GCF committee would, I’m sure, appreciate your prayers too. We would also really appreciate prayer for some of the challenges I mentioned above: how to conduct GCF online during Trinity, how to serve students whilst they work from home and potentially feel disconnected and lonely, and how to have rich and humble conversations with those who are potentially newly seeking answers to fundamental questions, or seeking a new basis for hope in a confusing and frail world. We want to be able to share the gospel faithfully, gently and respectfully this term, and in all terms, as well as providing a space for postgraduate Christians to connect and learn from each other, and so we would appreciate ongoing prayer into that.

To listen to recorded talks from previous GCF speakers visit their website.